Whether you're sitting in the same room, across campus, or in different countries, you can collaborate with others using Google Docs & Spreadsheets. If you're using the application, and you live outside the U.S. or you're working with people outside of the U.S., we'd love to hear from you about what you're up to. So far we've heard from authors, college students, dragstrip operators, police officers, and even fantasy baseball league members.

Post your story here in our Google Group and while you're at it, check out other stories as well.

Have you ever come across a link to a document on the web and wished you could open it directly with Google Docs & Spreadsheets? The process until now has been somewhat convoluted -- you needed to save the file to your desktop, then upload it to Google Docs & Spreadsheets. What a drag. Wouldn't it be nice to save a few steps, and turn that drag into drag-and-drop? Thanks to our friends on the Google Toolbar team, you can.

We just launched Google Toolbar 3 Beta for Firefox, and it includes some very cool features for Google Docs & Spreadsheets users. With those features enabled, you can open most popular file types in Google D&S. Clicking a link to a file on a web page will open the document directly in your browser window. Even cooler, you can drag file icons from your desktop to your browser and have them automatically imported into D&S. Once you've installed the beta, enable these features from the "Options" menu of your Toolbar.

Being able to drag and drop files directly has really streamlined my day. Maybe I can even use that free time to catch up on my holiday shopping. And since you asked, Google Docs & Spreadsheets is a handy way to manage your shopping lists!